Montaigne’s Heiress

…with the person I called the “psycho stalkerbitch” (more on that in a moment), I would have said this:

Dear M——,

This isn’t going to be a lecture. I’m not in a position to give you one, given my own corrupt actions as of late. I can’t change anything about you at all, but I can tell you my feelings.

Frankly, I feel great fear whenever you contact me. Fear, and a fascination almost exactly in quality like the fascination I feel when my FOO emails me. I have given up looking for their emails in my trash bin for the past couple of weeks, and turned instead to looking for yours. I find it sickening and worrying that there comes a “high” even with the sinking feeling I have in the pit of my stomach when I see your email address. I am also quite afraid to pick up my telephone lest you be calling me from a different number than the one I have blocked. But next time, I shall pick up the phone and speak with you, if it is you.

I’ve been thinking – and also denying that I was thinking – yesterday about what made you what you are. Sure, you make choices and you threaten me of your own choice… but in reality what I’ve begun to see is the choices that the people who raised you must have made, and how often and how long you must have been threatened in your childhood. Because a person who was raised in a loving and supportive environment would not make the choice – or even conceive of making the choice – to be as you are. In a big way – recognizing elements of my own actions in yours – I pity you. I can’t say that I have much empathy – at least under my definition, “empathy” is reserved for people who might perhaps heal – but I do have pity.

Pity is not a good feeling. Pity is what you feel when you condemn a person to being what and who they are for the rest of their lives, knowing that it is as likely for the moon to fall from the sky as it is for them to heal, and become good people. Pity is for when you know that you can’t do anything worse to them to punish them than to let them alone – and leave them alone with their own thoughts. I don’t relish the feeling. I have pity for people like mother – and pity ennobles neither the person who feels nor the person whom it’s felt about.

I also feel sadness… but I’m not sure where it comes from. I have a theory – that I am sad for myself and for what I’ve been denying feeling in your presence – but I’m not sure it’s right. But I feel some.

I also feel… well, “defensive” is a word for it, but I’m not sure if that’s the right word. It’s a need to be “right” at all costs. Unfortunately, what being “right” here has cost is the truth. I’ve had to deny and lie and obfuscate about a lot of things in order to be “right” – I’ve had to lie to myself as well as to you. From the very first second that I met you, I felt the need to lie. And – though I should have turned on my heel and left right then – I didn’t. My MEs warned me, and I blew right past the warning. That scares me.

So, in all honesty… I hate you. But it’s that sort of weary hate that acknowledges its own guilt. It’s that sort of hate which acknowledges that I don’t have the high ground, and I’m not in the right, and that even though you’re a bully and it’s really not at all about you getting your money… I have to push those “bad” thoughts out on to you even more than you deserve, so that the calumny is not turned inwards.

I hate you as a substitute for self-recrimination. If we’re being honest.

By the way, if you phone me today I’ll send you any amount of money you want. But it won’t ease my conscience, and it won’t remove the curse of family from you. You moved back in with your parents… to save money. God, it’s not worth it.

C.

“It only weighs 15 pounds,” I thought. “I’ll have no problem carrying this 5 blocks.”

By the time I reached the street corner, I didn’t believe it weighed 15 pounds any more. More like 20.

By the time I wrestled the huge box into the building I’m staying in, I was ready to believe the writing on the box, which said 26 pounds.

Unfortunately, the inconvenience of carrying a large flat box with a 26-pound tabletop in it 5 blocks in a high wind is not the worst thing that I’ve put myself in for in the past week.

Our story begins on 4 December, when I returned to America and began searching for an apartment. I was staying – as you probably know by now – in a youth hostel. The room I was in had 12 beds in it, mostly filled with people who had come to NY to party – and so there was noise going on at all hours of the night. I didn’t resent it. When you’re paying $19 a night at a youth hostel instead of $189 a night in a cheap hotel, you’ve got no right to complain about the noise.

However, I did want to get out of the hostel, and very quickly. So when I saw an ad for an apartment in my old neighborhood, I immediately jumped on it – and went to go meet one of the roommates. She seemed nice enough, and the kitchen and bathroom were clean, and the two cats (or, more importantly, their litter box) seemed well cared-for. The only catch, I was told, is that one of the roommates smokes pot very occasionally. Having had a roommate in the past who also smoked very occasionally – i.e. about twice a month, in her own room, completely unobtrusively, I said fine. We agreed to come to a decision by the next day.

The next day, I phoned. No answer. Nor the next. I figured they had found someone else and continued looking. Then, 4 days after our initial meeting, I got an email from the other roommate: if you can drop off the deposit, you’re in. And please come drop off the deposit soon, because the roommate who is leaving is “intense.” So I went to drop off the deposit (stupidly, in cash, because it was the weekend and I hadn’t received checks for my new checking account yet) with the roommate who was moving out. But they had told me incorrectly. The new roommate had already paid the whole month’s rent, she said. So where was the other half of December rent?

Well… I was told I only needed to drop off the deposit. Write down your address, and I’ll mail you a money order on Monday.

Monday came, and I did. I moved in and sent the 1/2 rent to the person who left.

Tuesday, I get an email from the roommate who left. Where’s my money? Uh… I mailed it yesterday. This is the week before Christmas. It might take a little bit.

Wednesday, I get an email and a phone call. Where’s my money? Um… I mailed it 2 days ago. Unless the USPS has actually become a decent mail service, it might take another couple of days.

Thursday, I get 2 emails and a phone call, and the roommate who left called the current roommate to give me a message. Ok… this is getting fucking weird. You’re trying to bully and intimidate me into doing what I already did.

By Thursday, I’d realized it was completely not going to work out. Not only because of this crazy bitch who keeps calling and emailing me, but because the “very occasionally” pot-smoking roommate turned out to smoke… twice a day. Right next to my bedroom door. And make extreme amounts of noise at 3am while doing it – in a loft space which echoes because the walls weren’t insulated correctly. Oh, and also, they apparently hadn’t done the dishes, scooped the litter, or cleaned the tub since the day I came to see the place nearly 2 weeks before. The final straw was that it seems there’s a third roommate: someone’s friend who has been sleeping on the couch every night since I moved in, and hanging out at the apartment all day. She pays no rent.

But really, I knew this was going to happen. From the fact that I didn’t meet roommate #2 before moving in, to the fact that roommate #1 couldn’t tell me what “very” occasionally meant to the fact that the person who left didn’t bother to clean the room before I moved in, to the fact that that person had been described as “intense” (which, I now know, means “a stalker-ish bully”)… I knew. I knew – even if this situation didn’t take place, that another would and that it wouldn’t work out – from the first.

By Friday, I’d had E-FUCKING-NOUGH of that apartment. I asked my ex-roommates if I could move into their place for about a week while all 3 of them were off vising their families. I got here Tuesday morning. That tabletop represented the last of my crap left over at the other place. I turned in the keys today – after exactly one week of living there, + 2 days to cart my crap away.

The calls and emails have not let up. The latest one said (among other things) “I have a family member who is a lawyer and can sue you!”

Try it.

So I’m out my deposit of $720 (already given to psycho stalkerbitch), and the deposit of the person who is going to remove in to replace me – which I arranged for the roommates still in the apartment to give, in total, to psycho stalkerbitch, even though by rights I only owe her $360.

I’m not worried about the putative “lawsuit” – but what I am worried about is that I walked into this with absolutely open eyes, knowing (if not the details) exactly how this thing would turn out. That worries me. Hence, therapy. Because carrying that 26-pound tabletop 5 blocks in a high wind has so far been the easiest part of this situation.

And, edited to add, because I realize I’ve not discussed my feelings:

This is really obviously a reFOO. Every time I see an email from this girl (whom I’ve blocked on gmail), I feel anxiety and fear and disgust. When she’s called (and she only has my Skype-in number, so I’ve been able to block her there too) I – the first time I picked up, because I didn’t know who it was – tried (rather successfully, fortunately and unfortunately) to mask my feelings. “Oh, hello, X! So terribly terribly nice of you to call. What, your money? Stop trying to bully and intimidate me – it simply won’t work.”

Except it is working. And that’s the thing. See… I know it’s working. Except I don’t want to admit it to myself. It’s not even self-preservation. It feels like wounded pride. In order not to see it, I’ve got to block that out.

I don’t care what this woman thinks of me, or even what she does. However… I know that I’ve put myself in a situation where I feel (and am trying to block out the feelings of) anger, disgust, fear, anxiety, tension, embarrassment… and rage.

And is it not fairly obvious that these feelings have been finding expression in other things? In other ways? Coming out, directed at people who have done little to deserve it?

There’s supposed to be a Christmas call – but I’m not going to join it. Part of me wants to… but it’s only that part (which I’ve been denying lately as well) that believes that whenever people I know get in groups without me around, it’s because they’re scheming to hurt me. Well, y’all are not scheming to hurt me, which I well know. The rest of me wants… a rest. And to go away for a while and figure this out.

I’m taking a short break from FDR in general, and (though I realize I’ve done some of it today) from commenting on your Facebooks and things – effective immediately. Just till I can get myself sorted, and become someone you’d actually feel comfortable being around. It makes me really sad to say, but that’s not where I am right now.